Welcome

We serve missions with practical and technical support. Based in Strijen, just south of Rotterdam, we support missions and their workers throughout the whole world. To support Gods kingdom and His workers allowing them to focus even more on preaching The Gospel. We do this by loaning a large number of cars to missionaries, preparing and distributing computers, sorting clothes and lots of other support work.

We invite everyone who has never been in Strijen to visit us and see how God has been faithful to this work all these years. His blessing and guidance allowed us to grow to a mission organization able to be a blessing to many other missions.

Computers for Oosteuropa Zending (Eastern Europe Mission)

There was a request from ‘Oosteuropa zending’ (Eastern Europe Mission) for computers to be used in their Dutch office. We had just been given a stack of computers from a school which matched exactly with their need.

Of course we also gave them the screens, keyboards, mice and cables they needed.

They came by to collect it all.

We could also help them with a color laser printer.

Their system admin will now install all these computers in their office.

Easy loading with the fork-truck.

Oma to care home

Dear Prayer partners,

This morning we (Randy and Ruth) took Oma to a care home in Dordrecht, a city about 7 miles from Strijen. Oma did not seem upset about this. Randy had several talks with her the past few weeks that this was going to happen. This due to his health problems and the strain of the work in combination with taking care of Oma, was just getting to much for him, but also for us.

On the way to Dordrecht she asked Randy several times: Where are we going? Are we going to the Hoge Weide (that is the care home in Strijen, and Oma has been there in the past for day care once a week) Randy kept explaining to her that there was no space in Strijen and she would first go to Dordrecht and once there is place in Strijen she would be moved to the facility in Strijen.

Her next question was: We know somebody there who is that? She was referring to Gerrit’s Mom. Gerrit and Karen work with us at Hands to Serve and his Mom was also in Dordrecht and recently moved to the carehome in Strijen. So Oma did remember this.
At the moment she has a private room, but they cannot guarantee she will keep it. The other rooms are for 2 people. We had a long talk with the doctor and one of the nurses, they asked us plenty of questions and we asked them questions.

After that we put up some pictures in Oma’s room and when we left she was in a large living room eating lunch with a big group of care home residents.

Please continue to pray for Oma that she will be able to get used to this enormous change and will feel at home there soon! Also pray for Randy with his health problems and also this big change for him!!

Update: Oma has now moved to from Dordrecht to a more permanent location in Strijen. This makes it a lot easier for us to regularly visit her, because she is now only a 10 minute bike ride away compared to a 20 minute car trip when she was still in Dordrecht.

It is possible to visit Oma, but please get in touch with us so we can coordinate the visits. It’s important to tell her distinctly who you are when you arrive so she can understand you are not one of the regular nurses. She recognizes people from their voice, because her eyesight is limited, but this is difficult for new voices.

A big thank you for your prayers for Oma and all of us at Hands to Serve.

Heart ECG for Randy

An increased heartrate followed by an irregular heartbeat made Randy (who is in charge of the Hands To Serve garage) travel to the emergency doctor here on our island on Saturday the 24th of March. The friend who drove him there then took him to the hospital in Rotterdam after the doctor directed him to go.

The outcome of a heart ECG and various other checks was a 95% OK, but they wanted to do a second blood test for safety reasons. That same afternoon Randy came home and instantly continued taking care of Oma and his work at Hands To Serve. Looking after Oma (his mother) is not something you can put on hold.

The time in the hospital gave Randy a chance to reflect on his life. It brought home the need to prayerfully change his daily life. It’s the start of a renewed spiritual quest to ask the Lord what needs to change and how.

The constant care for Oma, together with Ruth, Steve, the local nurses and many friends and volunteers from our village has drained Randy of his energy. Long days with little sleep while mission work continues at high speed has not been easy. Also the departure of Doug, our full time mechanic, has made a big impact on Randy’s work life.

More medical tests are needed for Randy. The discussion to move Oma to a care home is now more real than ever. Please pray with us for wisdom and insight to make the right decisions. Much will depend on the availability of a room in a care home close to us.

Network upgrade YWAM Amsterdam

This Friday I went to YWAM in Amsterdam to give a presentation about the new European data protection laws. This also has some influence on the way IT is organized and we like to help them with this.

We also discussed how to improve the internal WiFi network. To start this improvement I installed a new network switch (one of the devices you see in the picture). This allows me to remotely monitor the internet load on each of these cables and maybe help me determine some areas of future improvement. Thankfully this switch was donated to our mission recently so we could save YWAM the money of buying a new one.